Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more

 

Anguish (1987)

Director: Bigas Luna

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

A strikingly original, intricately constructed, and extremely gruesome horror film about a mother-fixated opthalmologist's assistant with an unhealthy interest in eyeballs. 'Soon' says his diminutive mother (Rubenstein), 'all the eyes in the city will be ours' - and she means it. Using creepily effective ultra close-ups and a clever Chinese box structure, Luna introduces another level of voyeuristic disturbance by allowing the events in this film-within-the-film to spill out into the auditorium (it's a case of who's watching who when?), where a teenage girl in the audience is becoming increasingly disturbed by the twitchy antics of a popcorn-eating man. The execution doesn't always match the boldness of the conception, but this post-modern shocker intelligently exploits the notion that horror is in the eye of the beholder.

Author: NF 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide


  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Bigas Luna

Producer: Pepon Caromina

Cast: Zelda Rubenstein, Michael Lerner, Talia Paul, Angel Jose full cast

Genre(s): Horror

Duration: 89 mins

Related articles




Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.